Using a browser, a user may visit a large number of web sites in various browser sessions. At each web site, a user may also visit multiple web pages during an individual browser session. In some cases, a description and an address (e.g., the Uniform Resource Locator or URL) for a web page visited during a browser session may be saved in a sequential, stack-based “history” list, possibly allowing a user to return to a previously visited web page by selecting its description from the history list. A user can open the history list to select previously viewed resources, which are usually identified by the title or address of the web page. A user can also “bookmark” a currently viewed web page in a Favorites list to facilitate selection of the bookmarked resource from the Favorites list for a later visit.
Browsers can also be used to traverse a file system, and a history list can be used to return to a previously visited directory or file within the file system. Generally, browsers may be said to browse resources, whether on the Web, in a file system, or in some other type of data storage.
Existing session history lists present disadvantages that limit their usefulness. By recording only portions of a single browser session (e.g., because of the nature of the stack-like recording mechanism), much of a user's recent browsing experience is lost both during a given browser session. In addition, existing history lists do to not retain history information across multiple browser sessions. Even if the web page of interest is recorded in a history list, the user may not remember the name or address of previously viewed web page and may, therefore, find it difficult to identify the desired web page in the history list.
Some browsers also provide global history archive, which include all the URL's visited by the user merging the browsing information from multiple browser sessions. Such browsers also apply various strategies for saving information relating to previously visited web pages for further reuse. In response to the search over such saved information, the user typically obtains only a URL or a title of the resource in the result list. In the Web environment, such limited results would not typically satisfy a user because the user is often unaware of the URL of the site that they previously browsed. In addition, the title of a resource is frequently uninformative or inaccurate. Furthermore, the saved information does not include navigation information, which limits the usefulness of such prior approaches. For example, the user cannot reconstruct the navigations steps within a browser session from this information.
Likewise, bookmarking does not fully address a user's needs because the web page in question may not have seemed important when it was previously viewed and, therefore, the user may not have designated it for inclusion in the Favorites list at that time. Thus, the web page may be lost to the user forever, unless the web page address is still recorded in a history list or the user can remember how to get back to the desired web page (e.g., by remembering the URL or remembering how to navigate back to the web page).
Unfortunately, users frequently forget previous navigation patterns, addresses, page titles, or search parameters and, instead, remember key words, colors, sounds, or layout characteristics on a web page. During an exemplary browser session, a user may not be able to remember the complicated URL to that e-commerce web page having that attractive blue tie in the middle of the page, but may be able to quickly select it from a subset of previously visited web pages having the color blue in the middle of the page. However, existing solutions fail to provide functionality to support this kind of interaction.